Moștenirea teoriei literare în epoca „post-teoretică”
The Legacy of Literary Theory in the ”Post-Theoretical” Age

Summary/Abstract: Terry Eagleton, the author of one of the most influential histories of literary theory in the 20th century, claims in his book from 2003 (After Theory) that literary and cultural studies are now experiencing their post-theoretical age. Since then more and more voices have been replicating, whether directly or rather nostalgically, Eagleton’s suggestion. In fact, as Jonathan Culler stated as early as the year 2000 (The Literary in Theory), today’s epoch is very much aware of the end of our faith in “the great theory” (see also Eagleton 2003: 2). However, this proves not only the fact that “the theory has not yet died”, but it also means that “the [literary and critical or cultural] theory” lives on implicitly or rather explicitly in the analytical, critical or hermeneutical approaches that are nowadays at the core of the discourse on literature and culture. Starting from these background assumptions, this paper seeks to portray what we see today as the legacy of the theoretical discourse on literature and culture in the 20th century in three main dimensions: 1. the instrumental and analytical dimension, relevant for pedagogical purposes (in the Western culture from Aristotle’s founding Poetics to the recent cognitive poetics); 2. the speculative dimension, relevant for interpretation (e.g. the set of multiple, implicit or explicit, conflicting or correlated definitions of the literary and cultural phenomenon which are used for the interpretation of texts and cultural phenomena) and 3. the epistemological dimension (i.e. “the literary theory” as continuous questioning of the nature of literary and cultural knowledge and its cultural presuppositions. In the end, these dimensions represent the way in which the critical discourse responds to the procesuality of the cultural phenomena (including literature).

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